In the Garden & Woods

Strawberries are coming on like gangbusters, we picked upwards of 5 gallons yesterday. Our Fort Laramie everbearing plants come on strong in the spring with smaller berries that gradually increase in size as the season progresses....and they are sooo sweet. The benefit of selling strawberry plants is that there are always a lot of strawberries left for us.

Finally some peas, it took a little longer than usual but our Tacoma Afila peas are looking nice - quick, reliable, and they taste pretty darn good too.

Cabbage and fava beans aren't looking too shabby either.

All our storage onion varieties seem to be on track and the best news is that with a cool spring we are still eating off last season's onion and garlic harvest...still nice and cool in the root cellar.

Foxglove (Digitalis) growing around our fruit trees. It is said of foxglove that it helps to stimulate neighboring plants by making them more disease resistant and improving the storage quality of fruits and vegetables due to gaseous secretions and minute hormones that the plants supposedly emit. (?)

Every morning of late we have been going for an early run, just before sunrise, in the mountains, stopping to pick various herbs as we go along. This week we have been focusing on gathering Prunella (self-heal/heal-all), yellow clover, and elderberry flowers. We also have a patch of Prunella growing in the garden this year from seeds saved from the wild. Fascinating plant.

Soon the native St. John's Wort, now starting to flower, will be abundant enough to harvest.

The sage is flowering, purple.

And the Rowdy dog...just being rowdy. He is not allowed to dig in the yard so he takes every advantage while we are out in the woods.